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2 Answers
2

What do you see as the top two most valuable cultural elements of ServerFault?

How will you perpetuate those cultural elements as a moderator?

What do you see as the top two flaws in SF's culture at the present time?

How would you address those cultural flaws as a moderator?

SysAdmin1138

Cultural Good/Bad

First of all, we are a group of people who like fixing problems. We like fixing them even when they're not entirely topical, though this impulse is moderated somewhat by the vote-to-close system. We even work together, keying off of other answers, to solve them. That's great!

Also, the tone of our answers is a real positive. With few exceptions, our answers do not include "WTF were you thinking" style verbiage when we're solving problems. This sets us above other similar sites, and that is a Good Thing.

On the other hand, mocking in comments of seemingly stupid, incoherent, or otherwise odd questions is on the rise. Kyle has mentioned in the past that Sysadmins in general tend towards mockery as a self-policing method, and that's definitely not the tone we need to set here. I strongly agree. Mocking is particularly insidious because it provides a barrier to entry for new people, and we don't need that.

Secondly, we do have a problem with minimum standards and where they are. We've had many debates over where the 'professional' line sits, as evidenced by the prior set of questions, and that leads to a lot of variability at the entry-level end of our career spectrum. We seem to be OK with people explicitly declaring that they're learning to do what we do, but have a low tolerance for people trying to do the learning but not stating that they're doing the learning. New SF users seem to want to answer anything they can, where the long-time users or deep-experts are much more likely to vote-to-close or worse, mock.

Moditorial fixing of culture

The diamond by the Moderator's name does not provide a strong bully pulpit. When a diamond-mod posts a comment it does carry more weight than even high-rep users, which is about as strong as it gets. Therefore, the largest influence of a mod is behind the scenes; removing things unilaterally (spam and bad questions), merging tags, responding to flag-for-mod-attention flags.

Mocking in answers can be addressed by 2K+ users and doesn't require mod-attention. Mocking in comments is another thing, and if I have the power I intend to do something about them when I see it happening. A mod-comment reminding people that such behavior is not encouraged here can do a lot to signal that such things shouldn't happen. Particularly egregious examples will be, if possible, removed.

Dealing with the minimum standards issue is an ongoing process and is a hearts-and-minds thing. We've been doing some of that work here in Meta, and I'll happily continue to contribute in that. Being a moderator changes my role in the debate somewhat, but I hope to continue to be a good influence in the debates.

Robert Moir

Two most valuable cultural elements and two worst flaws of SF

The sysadmin community as a whole is very much focussed on "see a problem, fix a problem" directness, which maps well to the ethos of the Stack Exchange sites idea to be a question and answer site. The downside of this is that it tends towards sarcasm and rude dismissal of people whose questions don't fit into that pattern. The BOFH stories on the register are funny because a lot of us recognise our own wishes at the end of a bad day in them, but its all too easy to forget the BOFH is a joke when you've had a bad day yourself.

The second aspect of SF that I like is that the regular contributors are always willing to help both people asking and people answering questions - by answering questions, editing and improving answers and, yes, closing duplicates with a link to a previous question/answer. The downside of this is that its possible to become jaded after a while, and be a little too quick to pull the trigger to close a question or to edit one yourself rather than allow/guide the author to improve their statements by themselves.

How moderators can boost these strengths and help deal with the weaknesses

In all the above cases, both strengths and weaknesses, I think that the moderator tools might well add a few features to make it easier, but an experienced user of the site should already be leading by example; editing and commenting (with as light a touch as possible) and generally helping people to improve questions and answers themselves.

One thing a moderator needs to remember is that they are in the limelight, so while experienced site users should be leading by example, any mistakes made by a moderator can generate far more ripples than those made by someone else. It isn't realistic to expect moderators to never make mistakes. It is realistic to expect them to remember they are moderators and think before using a moderator tool.

This leads me back to encouraging people to do the right thing rather than forcing them - be firm and always be consistent, but use a light touch if possible and explain your actions as a moderator so that people will know why you acted and what they need to work on in the future.

Mark Henderson

What do you see as the top two most valuable cultural elements of
ServerFault?

For the most part, we're people who
actually give a shit about the
problems that we're helping to solve.
So many times when I'm googling for
issues and I see forums (mainly
TechNet and Expert Sexchange threads)
where answering peoples problems are
almost done rudely, and only done
because whoever is doing it is
required to do it to keep some sort of
status. I have no idea whether or not
that's true, but that's mostly the
impression that I get. When I joined I
specifically decided I wanted to get
to 10k rep and then I would quit
(because I had "won" the game). But
it's many moons after I reached the
10k threshold and I'm still here, and
I would be still be here if you took
rep away completely.

Secondly, I'm actually glad to say,
this is mostly an impartial place (see
my answer for the flaws of SF for a
continuation of this!). People come to
get an answer, and an answer is what
they get. They (usually) don't get any
"That's stupid, you should just use
Linux it's got that built in", there's
very little preaching and when people
disagree, they usually agree to
disagree. When there are people making
others feel un-welcome, they are
flagged into oblivion by the wider
community.

How will you perpetuate those cultural elements as a moderator?

Honestly, the great thing about the
community here is that there's not
much a moderator needs to (or even can
do) to let the site continue being a
caring place. The community is a fluid
thing but it seems to be that when new
people join, they see the attitudes of
those before them and continue this
attitude, thus leaving a legacy for
those that come later. Just as long as
we clean up the few spills along the
way, new users will have nothing to
fear about here. This applies to both
my favourite elements on SF - clean up
the spills along the way and they
won't continue to happen in the future
(much).

What do you see as the top two flaws in SF's culture at the present time?

Server Fault is now at an age where
cliques start to form, and this can be
counter-productive in multiple ways:

Comment spam can build up that's totally irrelevant to the question. I
am guilty of this myself - leaving
little 'in' jokes around the place for
other grandfather users to see and
have a little giggle about.

It can be a barrier of entry to new users. Admittedly Server Fault
overcomes a lot of these issues
through its innovative design and
process, but I remember when I first
came to SF and I went to
meta.stackoverflow - I felt like a
complete outsider and really unwelcome. When I raised my concerns I
was shot down and my question was
long-since deleted. I know that at the
time there are other (now departed) SF
users who felt the same way. I really,
really hope that SF does not go down
that path. Particularly
meta.serverfault. Everyone here should
be made to feel welcome - and 99% of
the time we do, but we need to make
sure it stays that way.

The other main flaw in SF (well, it's
not really a "flaw" as such...) is
that it's definately the 3rd of the
trilogy sites, even though it was the
2nd site launched. If you look at
Stack Overflow, there are questions
and answers there that literally have
a THOUSAND upvotes, and questions with
dozens or even hundreds of votes are
not uncommon. The only way a question
or answer on this site EVER gets that
kind of attention is when Jeff posts a
link on twitter or codinghorror about
it. The perceived lack of voting here
has two issues:

I realise that SU and SO have many more users than we do, and SO is one
of the most popular websites in the
world. We can never, ever even begin
to think about matching that sort of
popularity. For starters there are
orders of magnitude more programmers
than sysadmins in the world, but the
lack of voting users can be
dissapointing. I've seen stupid,
stupid CW questions upvoted 40 times
when a really great, thought out
question gets 5kviews and a grand
total of 2 upvotes. People who post
GREAT questions and GREAT answers need
to be rewarded appropriately, and I
feel that they are not at the moment.

Not enough of our users vote enough. I believe that upvotes are
more imporant than downvotes, but ANY
kind of vote is appreciated. I'm also
an offender of this. I have proudly
voted 2759 times (u:2516, d:243) which
makes me one of the most proliferant
voters on SF, but even I don't do
enough voting. I've only run out of
votes maybe 3 times since I joined.

How would you address those cultural flaws as a moderator?

I know this has been a very, very long
speech, but this one is a short
answer:

I will vote more. A lot more. Even if
I don't become a moderator, starting
right now, I'm going to try and use up
my daily votes at least once a week.

This is more difficult than it
sounds as 00:00 GMT is right in the
middle of my work-day, so my votes
roll over half-way through the day,
and voting that many times in a single
day would just mean voting
meaninglessly

Sam

What do you see as the top two most
valuable cultural elements of
ServerFault and how will you
perpetuate those cultural elements as
a moderator?

This might seem like an obvious
statement, but the most valuable thing
we have is a community of users
willing to answer people’s questions
and not just with a quick answer. We
have a collection of people willing to
look at a question, apply their
knowledge to it, and then go off and
research a solution, often to very
complex problems, and provide an
answer to a person on the internet who
they will likely never meet, or see
how they benefit from their work,
because they can.

There is an easy way for moderators to
help perpetuate this by making it easy
for them to do so. Remove the spam and
the advertisements that get in the
way, help to clean up the
inappropriate or misplaced questions,
edit these questions to make sure they
can reach the people best able to help
them. If the moderators can help to do
this, the users are able to focus on
what really matters, quality answers.

Another great point about Serverfault
is that a lot of the time, moderators
aren’t needed. People have invested so
much time and effort into this site,
that they are also invested in keeping
the site clean and organised and
editing, migrating or closing
questions where it is needed. I also
feel that by operating in this way
users feel better when they have their
questions edited or moved. It seems
much less personal when 5 people have
voted together to close or move your
question than when a single superman
jumps in and does it. I’m be much more
inclined to consider that my question
had problems if 5 of my peers agreed
on that.

There is an easy way for moderators to
help perpetuate this, keep their
fingers out of the pie! There are some
tasks that a moderator should be very
keen on dealing with, spam, abuse etc.
But I feel a good moderator shouldn’t
be visible to users until it is clear
that they are needed. There is no call
to use the mod hammer to close a
question that will get closed by users
(often with positive feedback to the
user that asked the question), there’s
no need for moderators to come in and
make sweeping changes to a question
when they know the users will help
evolve this question over the time.
Moderation is a power to be used
lightly and honed over time, not a
chain gun to be used on all that get
in its way.

What do you see as the top two flaws
in SF's culture at the present time
and how would you address those
cultural flaws as a moderator?

One of the increasingly common faults
I have seen with the community is the
fact that we can be somewhat elitist
as to what questions we will answer.
We look at a question that is badly
worded, with spelling or grammar
mistakes as being written by someone
too lazy to make the effort, so why
should we spend time answering it.
However more and more of the time,
these sorts of questions are from
people whose first language is not
English, or who are struggling in
trying to put their thoughts into
words, but are trying very hard to put
together a question.

We should be more accommodating in
this area, particularly as high rep
users and moderators, and spend some
time helping these users clean up
their questions and make them better,
rather than jumping on the close
button. I’m as guilty as the next
person in this sometimes, and I need
to do better at taking the time to try
and establish what someone is trying
to ask. If we can get this far, then
the question has value and we can help
by editing and formatting the question
so that it gets good answers. No
question should be written off just
because it doesn’t read well at first
glance. A moderator’s role should be
as a guide, to spot these users that
might be struggling and help and
encourage them to write better
questions.

My final bad point is something we’ve
all done at some point I’m sure. You
see a question where you think “OMGZ
how can they not know that” because
the answer is so blindingly
obvious..... to you. We’ve all learned
so much over our careers that we can
sometimes forget what it is like to
not know the basics, especially those
times when you know that the answer
should be obvious, but you can’t get
it. We’ve all been there, but now our
heads are so full of the incredibly
intricate solutions to complicated
problems that we forget and we leave
condescending comments or LMGTFY
links. It has probably taken that user
some courage to ask what they know is
a simple question, but we make them
feel bad about it.

I’m by no means saying this is
happening all the time, but we have
all thought that way I’m sure, when
we’re busy and stressed, but it’s not
fair to that user. As a moderator I’d
like to think that I can help dissuade
this behaviour by leading by example
and letting people know that snide
comments and LMGTFY links don’t help.
Along with reassuring the, often new,
users that it’s ok to ask questions
that might seem simple, because you
can guarantee that they are not going
to be the only ones who benefit from
the answer. A moderator’s diamond adds
some weight to your responses and it
should be used for good.

Ben

Best bits

In my opinion the best two elements of Server Fault (and the
reasons I registered as a user in
fact) are the overwhelming sense of
friendliness and willingness to help.
I have registered on many internet
forums in the past, and posting as a
newbie I was often put down in some
way by someone who had a high post
count and was thus "more important"
than me. My first posts were usually
disagreed with and I wasn't made to
feel particularly welcome. Here at
Server Fault, I "lurked" for a while
so I could get a feel for the place,
and was bowled over by the sense of
community and real friendliness, even
by the high rep users (who on forums
I'd experienced in the past I would
generally consider to be jerks). When
I had a problem I couldn't figure out,
I was confident that when I posted it
on Server Fault I would be met with
some friendly and awesome answers by
some incredibly clever people.

As a moderator, I would continue to
encourage this friendly behaviour and
try to make Server Fault a better
place by removing the "noise" posts we
get (non-answers and spam). I want
Server Fault to be the place for
people in our profession to go to
share their knowledge, and in my
efforts to remove all the noise I hope
to encourage even more professionals
to join and participate.

Worst bits

As mentioned by the other candidates, we do seem to have a
problem with inappropriate comments.
It's not a major problem, but a
problem that needs to be addressed
nonetheless. I am certainly not
playing totally innocent here - I have
posted the odd snarky comment at the
end of a long and hard day, but I
usually deleted them after a few hours
when I'd cooled down. I have since
realised that such grumpy comments are
unacceptable, and as a moderator I
would work to remove such comments
that poke fun at people or don't
really add anything to the discussion.
I would give gentle reminders of what
comments are designed for, as people
seeing a moderator discouraging
something will be less inclined to do
it themselves.

Another problem is we can be very
quick to jump on the close button. We
need to figure out what the original
poster really wants and try and edit
the question to fit. Bad English and
grammar can easily be fixed with an
edit, and can really salvage a
potentially good question. I have
recently started to do this to poor
questions that I see, and as a
moderator I would continue this trend.
Again, people seeing a moderator do
this might be more encouraged to do it
themselves, or at least not go
straight for the close button and try
and figure out what the question asker
really wants.

Server Fault is for system
administrators and desktop support
professionals, people who manage or
maintain computers in a professional
capacity.

Please enunciate what you believe is a good definition of "professional capacity".

Second Question (related):

What determines if a question is asked in a "professional capacity" and deserves an answer and what should be closed and/or migrated to another site (usually SuperUser)?

Response: Mark Henderson

First Question:

If you are in charge of more than just
your own computer at your company, or
your company has appointed you to a
position where you're expected to
manage hardware or software, then you
can ask your question here. This
includes both beginners and old-timers
alike. That said however, we expect
you to take a professional attitude
towards your question, and not ask
"plz send teh codes, kthxbai".

Second Question:

Does the question include the word
"home"? If it does, can the question
be re-written so that it applies to
the sysadmin community. For example,
if you're setting up "Windows Home
Server", then it should be moved to
Super User. However, if you say "I'm
having trouble applying a GPO policy
to my Active Directory that I've set
up at home", then by removing the last
few words of the question the question
is then applicable to a wider
audience.

Response: SysAdmin1138

First Question

"Professional Capacity" means you get paid to do what we do, or in a better funded organization would normally be paid (I'm sure we have some non-profiteers around here somewhere). That's about 80% of it right there, which is the easy part. We also expect a certain foundation of learning in questions, unless they're specifically tagged as seeking learning. The topics vary, and so does system-administration, but some depth in your field is expected. Depth provides the ability to ask focused questions, which yield answers and not multi-page essays on the potential gotchas of $Technology.

Second Question

Questions asked in a professional capacity and not deserving of closure/migration, have a few key features:

Is implicitly not about something in the home, or devices/technologies rarely seen outside of the home.

Displays at least some understanding of the technology causing the problem.

Is asked with enough focus to allow an answer with just the supplied information.

Focuses on technology in the context of the enterprise or web-services, or policy relating to that technology.

Migrating to another site needs to be done with care. The SuperUser community is tired of being the dumping ground of the trilogy (see their moderator nomination-statements for proof of this). Webmasters.SE, one of our migration targets, defines "webmaster" differently than we system administrators do. A good question for migration needs to be topical on the destination community as well. Because of this I've been voting to close-as-off-topic questions that are earning migration votes.

Response: Robert Moir

Professional Capacity

A good definition of this needs to be flexible rather than a rod to beat ourselves with, but I'm happy with the idea that if you are managing all or part of a network or group of computers as all or part of your job, then this site is for you. I like this definition as I think the site should be inclusive of all levels of ability, and this includes not just veterans and newbies, but also people who work in a specialised area (e.g. deployment) and people who are not full time sysadmins but who have to manage them as part of their overall duties.

Good questions, and the issue of migration

Firstly the obvious qualifiers, such as talking about a business network rather than a home one and talking about "real life problems" as opposed to "I saw a movie once where the computers did whatever and I thought it would be neat if... discuss".

I think a good "professional" question is one where the asker has invested some time in thinking about the question prior to asking it - or where people need help with asking a good question, where they are prepared to clarify their question and to work with people who are trying to help them. You only get as much out of sites like this as you put into it, and a professional question shows some recognition of this.

As for migration to other sites, I know I feel frustrated sometimes when we get questions dumped here by Stack Overflow with little thought, so I can only imagine that Super User people must be frustrated because sometimes I think we must do that to them too. I know I've probably been guilty of voting that way myself wrongly when I first had that ability. As such, I've started looking at questions and if they can't/aren't being clarified then probably opting to close rather than just migrate unless its clearly a case of the question being on the wrong site.

Response: Ben

First Question:

For the most part, this describes
somebody whose primary job function is
to manage servers or computers other
than their own. Job titles often
include System Administrator,
Helpdesk Analyst and IT Support, but I won't exclude the smaller shops
where a developer might also double up
as the System Administrator for the
company. As long as they are asking a
reasonable, coherent and on-topic
question, I have no problem with the
question being on Server Fault.

Second Question:

If a question is relating to hardware
or software which is specifically used
in professional server applications
(RAID, redundant PSU's, Windows Server
OS, Microsoft SQL Server etc) then the
question is on-topic for Server Fault.
There will obviously be some grey
areas such as Linux installed to run a
web server for home use, but if the
same question can be asked and it
still be relevant and helpful for
somebody whose primary purpose in
their organisation is to manage the
company web server, then I think it
should stay here.

Ultimately though, questions should
reside on the Stack Exchange site
which they will receive the correct
and best answers.

Response: Sam

First Question:

Whilst I suppose the technical definition of "Professionally Capacity" would be getting
paid for doing that work, I think
there has to be some flexibility to
that, otherwise you exclude
potentially quite a large area of
those that are trying to learn, but
don't get paid for it. This includes
students, people trying to learn the
trade to get a job and hobbyist.
Whilst their questions don't come from
the perspective of getting paid for
delivering something, it comes from an
interest in being professional and
wanting to build a professional solution,
even if it might not end up in a
commercial situation. Having a professional outlook is more important, to me, than a job title.

Second Question:

In tandem with my first answer, my definition of whether a question should be open rather
than closed or migrated is based on
the value of the question itself. If
this question is asked by a student
trying to set-up a Cisco lab under his bed, but
would provide value to those doing a
similar thing in a million pound (or
dollar) server room, then it get's to
stay. I think the mind set and aim of
the question is far more important
than the job of the person submitting
it. Conversely, if a 20K rep user asks
a question about his home AV setup,
it's going to get closed.

As Sysadmin1138 has already pointed
out, migration needs to be done
carefully. We all got fed up with
Serverfault being a dumping ground for
Stackoverflow when things first
started, so we all know how annoying
that can be. We don't need to inflict
it on others. Bad questions about
superuser topics should get closed
here, not moved to SU to get closed by
them, we all have enough to do without
doing other peoples work.

Response: Ward

First Question:

I don't think this issue deserves two
closely-related questions. We all
recognize "a professional capacity"
when we see it, and I don't think the
site is harmed if the edge cases are
sometimes migrated, sometimes not.

In any case, "professional capacity"
means that you have a business
responsibility to make it possible for
other people to use computers. In
principle, if you are one member of a
two-person business, and you do tech
support for the other person, sure,
you're a pro. Most of your questions
will be better suited to SuperUser,
but not all of them.

Second Question):

As mentioned above, even if a question
is clearly asked in a "professional
capacity" it might make more sense to
migrate it. The usual indicators of
"not a professional sys admin" are
questions about "my PC," ie a single
or very small number of PCs. But you
could have a small office where they
use WSUS and have a question about
using it w/ only two clients, so
there'll always be borderline cases.